98 HUXLEY 



Being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for 

 existence which everywhere goes on, from long-con- 

 tinued observations of the habits of plants and animals, 

 it at once struck me that under these circumstances 

 favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and 

 unfavourable ones destroyed. The result of this 

 would be the formation of new species. 1 



In 1842 he put his theory into shape, then enlarged 

 his manuscript from time to time, and with that un- 

 paralleled patience which controlled all his researches, 

 went on collecting masses of facts and weighing the 

 evidence deducible from them, not venturing to make 

 known, save to his most intimate friends, his convic- 

 tions as to the mutability of species. It seemed 

 "like confessing a murder," he said. And so the 

 matter drifted until 1858, when there came to him 

 from Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, who was living at 

 Ternate, an island in the Malay Archipelago, a com- 

 munication in which his own theory was propounded, 

 and in such coincidence of terms that Darwin told 

 Lyell if Wallace had had his MS. sketch of 1842, 

 " he could not have made a better short abstract." 2 

 To complete the parallel, Wallace also was led to 

 think of " positive checks " by reading Parson 

 Malthus. After conferring with Hooker and Lyell, 

 both of whom had seen Darwin's abstract some years 

 before, it was arranged that Wallace's paper and a 



1 Darwin's Life and Letters, i. p. 83. 2 lb., ii. p. 116. 



